During periods when the GOES-12 imager is placed into Rapid Scan Operations (RSO) — as was the case on 05 January 2007 to monitor severe convection over the southeastern US — the coverage of the southern 2/3 of the South American continent is limited to only 1 image every 3 hours (when GOES-12 does a full disk scan). The color-enhanced IR window (IRW) image comparison above shows the difference in South American coverage between GOES-12 (in RSO) and GOES-10 (in routine operations) at 20:25/20:28 UTC, and Java animations of GOES-12 and GOES-10 imagery from that day further demonstrate the value of having the GOES-10 satellite positioned at 60Âº W longitude to support the Earth Observation Partnership of the Americas (EOPA) project. During the GOES-12 RSO period, which began at 18:30 UTC on that day, the entire South American continent was sampled 3-4 times per hour with GOES-10, allowing southern hemisphere meterologists to monitor the widespread convection and other phenomena that were occurring over that continent. The latest GOES-10 sounder and imager products are available on the CIMSS GOES Realtime Derived Products site.